Nature Theater of Oklahoma Poetics: a ballet brut

Avoid the hex of the unbeliever! See both these shows by Nature Theater of Oklahoma, an exciting young performance group based in New York and directed by Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper.

Their name comes from a line in their inspiration, Franz Kafka’s Amerika, and their creative stagecraft transforms ready-made materials and found dialogue into revelatory DIY theater.

Poetics: a ballet brut is a wryly constructed dance piece delightfully unhampered by its performers’ complete lack of formal dance training. It takes a vast assortment of common gestures and movements to hilarious new heights. As it unfolds, Poetics expands from casual encounters to a delightfully skewed dance of life of grand proportions. The Village Voice calls it “smart, witty, highly physical, and eager to twist notions of theatricality.”

This event made possible in part by a grant from the National Performance Network’s Performance Residency Program. Major contributors of the National Performance Network include the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency), Altria, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. For more information: npn.org.